


I built this ship to wreck

by Lizicia



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Snowells, Truth and Lies, hints of killerfrost and reversefrost, post-1x23, the confrontation that never was
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-31 10:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3975448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizicia/pseuds/Lizicia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Caitlin takes a deep breath in before she activates the door which separates the pipeline from the outside world, the Reverse Flash from her, confrontation from denial.<br/>And pushes the biometric lock.<br/>She’s seen the man standing on the other side countless of times but never has he seemed so foreign, so cruel, so untouchable.</p><p>Post S1 finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I built this ship to wreck

**Author's Note:**

> I needed more of Caitlin and Wells, so I wrote it.  
> Title paraphrased from Florence + the Machine's "Ship to Wreck".

Caitlin takes a deep breath in before she activates the door which separates the pipeline from the outside world, the Reverse Flash from her, confrontation from denial.

And pushes the biometric lock.

She’s seen the man standing on the other side countless of times but never has he seemed so foreign, so cruel, so untouchable.

“Caitlin.”

She definitely does not shiver when he says her name, softly and slightly surprised as if he hadn’t been expecting this, as if he didn’t know she was in charge of delivering food to everyone contained in the pipeline, ex-mentors slash bosses slash complicated relationships included.

“Barry said you should have a last meal from Big Belly Burger. Something about the lack of cows in the future?”

He smirks and nods. “How kind of you, Caitlin.”

He must know the effect him saying her name still has, even if she suppresses it the most she can. So she doesn’t respond, only pushes the bag of food through the slot and turns around, intent on leaving as fast as she came.

“Is that all?”

He sounds almost disappointed and she stops in her tracks, feeling his eyes bore into her back from behind.

“I expected you might have the most to say to me.”

The nerve of him.

She steels herself against his gaze and turns around, not one to be intimidated by a man in a cell. “And what exactly should that be?”

“Oh, you know. How you are disappointed and angry and frustrated. How you were the first person I picked for this team and if that means something. How I betrayed all of your trust, but maybe yours most of all. How I killed Ronnie. How you didn’t see this coming. How you still don’t want to believe it.”

He lays it all out between them, dispassionate and almost bored but there is a certain malicious glint in his eyes as the accusations rack up, almost like he’s expecting her to crack under the weight of this all.

“Yes, you’re right. I am all of those things and you clearly know it all anyways, so I don’t think you should get the satisfaction of hearing me say any of it.”

She looks straight into his eyes and doesn’t waver, doesn’t let him see just how much each and every one of his words stings and burns, leaving only bitterness in its wake.

“I don’t even know who you are.”

“On the contrary, Caitlin. I think you are the person who knows me the most, against my better judgment, against any desire I had for it. You know exactly who I am.”

And she feels the sting of tears in her eyes and she will not cry in front of this man, she will not let herself be weak and vulnerable because he doesn’t deserve it.

“No. I know who Harrison Wells is. He is the man who hired me to make something out of the projects all others thought I was crazy to undertake. He made me believe I could be the best in my field. He created something amazing and he invited me to come along. But he doesn’t really exist, so I don’t know who you are.”

He has the nerve to look chagrined and a bit chastised, and it’s almost too much. He can’t be cruel with his words and then make her feel sorry for him with his actions a minute later because that is a contradiction Caitlin doesn’t know how to handle.

“I chose you because I believed in you. And maybe Harrison Wells never existed in the sense most people do but you’ve always liked me for who I am. And it doesn’t matter what name I bear because I have never lied to you, Caitlin.”

She half-snorts, half-chuckles because that is perhaps the biggest lie of them all. “You just neglected to mention that you killed an innocent man to take _his face_ and that you are some sort of a time-traveling villain from the future?”

“You never asked.”

“What, so it was a lie of omission and that makes it all _better_?”

“Well, don’t we all do that? Lie by omission? Keep secrets from the people closest to us because not everything needs to be shared?”

“Good people don’t need to keep secrets.”

Now he is the one to chuckle but there is something edgy in it, something with sharp corners and danger and she doesn’t realize yet that she’s stumbling into a field of mines.

“I see you’re wearing your engagement ring again.”

Caitlin looks down at her hands, crossed over her chest and the diamond which sparkles on her left ring finger.

“So?”

“Ronnie must be of a very forgiving nature then, if you’re not keeping any secrets from him.”

She feels her face get hot at his implication and risks a glance towards the camera; nobody is supposed to be watching right now but she knows better than to take risks with that.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He smirks, infuriatingly and she can see him contemplate what to say next, because there are too many things he could follow that up with.

He could talk about Geneva, her impulsiveness still as fresh in her mind as the fleeting sensation of his lips against hers.

Or he could talk about Washington, and of his hands under her skirt and hers almost ripping off two buttons from his shirt in a darkened alcove before the fog of alcohol cleared.

Or, worst of all, he could reminiscence about that one night in his empty house when Barry was deep in a coma, when Ronnie was dead, when the world seemed meaningless and hollow and she convinced herself that he was just as broken as she was, him unable to move on his own and her with an engagement ring leading nowhere, and his touch left a fire in its wake which she still hasn’t quite forgotten.

Not one of these options is particularly appealing, least of all with a presumed audience.

“Why did you have to pretend to be paralyzed?”

It’s a desperate attempt at deflection and she knows that he can see right through it, even if her thoughts led her from his house to this question legitimately.

He regards her for a moment and she doesn’t want to but pleads with him wordlessly, conceding defeat to the issue about lies and omissions because she truly doesn’t have the higher ground here and she would rather they didn’t hash this out when anyone could overhead and know.

And miraculously, it works. “I didn’t pretend all the time. When the accelerator exploded, my ability to speed came back but it was unstable, and in the beginning, it rendered me unable to move. So I was, in fact, paralyzed. And once I was able to harness it again, it was too unstable to sustain on its own, and since it needed to be with me at all times and I couldn’t really just carry it with me, I built it into the chair.”

“How long did it last?”

And now she’s the one who’s made a reference to the time she just begged him not to mention and he understands what she can’t say.

“Just a month.”

A small part of her wonders, treacherously, just why she couldn’t have had him without the pretense but she quashes that thought instantly. The way his eyes track her face tells her that he sees right through her with that.

She doesn’t realize she just stands there in silence for a full minute, not moving, so when he speaks up, she is startled.

“So you and Ronnie are finally getting married then?”

She nods and twirls her engagement ring around her finger out of habit she picked up after Ronnie’s death and hasn’t quite gotten rid of yet.

“I still have the dress and we’ve waited long enough, so...”

“This will have interesting ramifications for your future, of course.”

Of all the things he could’ve said, that is probably the most puzzlingly vague. “Interesting ramifications? I’m getting married.”

“Yes, but you could have so many futures, Caitlin. This is only one of them.”

“Are you going to tell me my future now?”

She goes for derisive and dismissive but the curiosity bleeds into her voice, the wonder that’s been roaming in her mind since she learned that he was actually from the _future_ making itself evident.

“Oh, but there are so many possibilities. If Barry succeeds in saving his mother, all of your timelines will be erased and re-written as well, not just his. If he never becomes the Flash then you never help him with any of this either. Who knows, you might not even be a scientist anymore.”

He smiles, a bit cruelly, and she wants to know.

“Tell me.”

He walks the length of his cell twice before looking at her again and his face is serious now, contemplative.

“I don’t know all the possible timelines, all the imaginable futures. There are too many variables to count all of them.”

And of course, he would do this, dangle some kind of magic in front of her without giving her any real answers, and she doesn’t understand why she even bothered.

“Don’t tell me then.”

She turns around but again, his voice stops her. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t tell you, Caitlin.”

“When I first came into this time, I saw some things. The past, the present, the future. And in one of those I saw something unimaginable.”

The lilt of his voice is magnetic and she faces him because whatever is underlying that sentence – even if she doesn’t understand all of it – is important.

He seems almost hesitant to continue but does so anyway. “I saw a dangerous and threatening force, almost too great to be wielded by one person, almost too destructive to ever be controlled. And yet, in the midst of this destruction, there was a person who harnessed it, who wreaked havoc and who created her own destiny.”

She notes the pronoun and her heart starts beating faster as she cannot quite comprehend what he is trying to tell her.

“I saw my past, and your future, Caitlin. You were always destined to find STAR Labs, to find this sequence of events, to fit so neatly. I thought I’d imagined you at first but when I saw you at that conference five years ago, I truly knew it was what you were supposed to do.”

His words seem preposterous and strange and unreal.

“Are you saying I’m some sort of a…metahuman?”

“Perhaps. You were there when the accelerator exploded; I wouldn’t be surprised. What I know is that you have a bright future ahead of you and I really hoped to be there when it happens for you.”

And it’s ridiculous and impossible because she hasn’t changed, she has been completely normal after the accident, no residual effects, no weird sensations, no powers (and her dreams do not count, she won’t make them count).

“I don’t believe you.”

He shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t expect you to but you asked, so I answered. I don’t intend to lie to you, Caitlin.”

“Did you hire me because of all… _that_?”

“I hired you because you’re brilliant and because if there was anyone I would trust to handle Barry in the future, it would be you. And because aside from Cisco, there was no one who fit in better at STAR Labs than you.”

She can’t listen to him say all these things because he sounds so genuine, so terribly truthful and it doesn’t fit with everything she’s discovered these past weeks. He was a good man before; he’s a murderer, a villain, an enemy now. He was Harrison Wells, but he is Eobard Thawne. She cannot allow herself to believe in any overlap.

“You should eat your food before it gets cold.”

“I know you think I’m a monster right now but Caitlin, believe me, your future will be beautiful. And I will be right there when it happens.”

She walks away from him this time, pressing on the screen only a second later than she should have, not wanting to listen to any more of what he has to say.

Her hands shake slightly but she’s not afraid; she’s never been afraid of him.

And she doesn’t even believe him or anything he’s said because he was just trying to get a rise out of her, right?

She definitely cannot feel her skin buzzing with a new energy or something lighting up in her veins.


End file.
